


Safety

by seekingsquake



Series: My Family, My Friends [6]
Category: She-Hulk, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bullying, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, threat of murder, threat of torture/implied torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 23:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bruce protected Jen, and one time Jen protected him instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:5+1 fic, 5 times Bruce protects Jen and one time Jen (or She-Hulk) protects him back.
> 
> All characters are property of Marvel.  
> Please do not repost or reupload this piece anywhere without consent. If you ask, I'm sure we can work something out :]

1.

The first time he gets to her house after school and she’s crying because some kid in her kindergarten class was picking on her, he gave her a hug and a scoop of ice cream. The second time it happened he gave her a hug, two scoops of ice cream, and let her make puppets out of the socks he had in his overnight bag. The third time it happened he marched her down to Timmy Miller’s house, knocked on the door, and said, “Mrs. Miller, Timmy has made my baby cousin cry three times in the past week and I think she’d feel a whole lot better if he said he was sorry.”

When Timmy came to the door he crouched down and said, “Timmy, it’s really not nice of you to purposefully hurt people’s feelings, and the next time you go out of your way to make Jenny cry it won’t be me here having this talk with you, it’ll be the sheriff.”

Thirteen year old Bruce Banner probably shouldn’t have been threatening a five year old with a visit from the sheriff, but Mrs. Miller didn’t say anything about it, Timmy apologized, and it never happened again. And that was good enough.

2. 

“Bruce. Bruce, he keeps calling me, and I’m scared something’s going to happen before the restraining order goes through.”

He’d gotten that call from her, and then he was on a bus to Boston within the hour. For weeks he’d been offering to come out and stay with her, and for weeks she’d been telling him not to, but the fear was only getting worse and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. As soon as he got to her apartment he was checking locks on all the doors and windows, arranging for the building manager to have her lock changed, and contacting the lawyer that he’d helped her pay for. 

She just sat on the couch and tried to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

Bruce didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to make her feel better. He was disturbed by how quickly her ex boyfriend had made the change from regular guy to fucking psychopath, and he was battling his own demons during the whole situation. His own nightmares. Sometimes when he looked at her he could almost see his mother’s face, his mother’s watery smile. He tries not to think about violence. He tries not to think about what he’d do if somebody laid an unwelcome hand of Jenny.

Instead he holds her. He answers the phone for her when it rings, answers her door, screens her mail when she asks him to. He sits beside her in the dark when every little noise keeps her awake. And when that asshole finally calls, Bruce says, “If you call here again. If you continue to bother her. If she tells me that she sees your ugly fucking face ever again in her lifetime. I swear to whatever god is out there that there is nowhere you can run to that I won’t find you. And when I find you. You’re going to wish that I hadn’t.”

She laughs, and it’s wet and wavery and hardly a laugh at all. “What kind of threat was that?” she murmurs.

“It wasn’t very scary, was it?”

“Too vague,” she agrees. Neither of them smile.

He takes her face in his hands, lets his lips brush her forehead, whispers, “I’d go to prison for what I’d do to him.” She shivers. He continues, “I’d fucking rip him apart.”

She stands there, stock still, and asks, “You’d kill him?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

She relaxes for the first time in months. He thinks about his father. He thinks about his mother. He thinks about Jenny. Yes. He’d kill him.

3.

They corner him in Argentina, back him up against a wall and block off his escape routes, but don’t move to get too close. Ross steps out of the shadows. He doesn’t say a word, but his face is stony, determined. He tosses a folder and it lands a Bruce’s feet. “Go ahead, take a look.”

Bruce moves slowly, doesn’t take his eyes off of the General, and cautiously picks up the folder. Green washes over his vision as he leafs through the contents of it. Photos. Dozens of photos, some as recent as having been taken just yesterday. All of Jen. 

He had received a similar file filled with photos of just Betty months before, but Bruce hadn’t bent because he knew. The General was many things, but he wasn’t going to outright murder his daughter. It had been a calculated bluff, based on the idea that Bruce would have married her, would have died for her. But she was never in any real danger. But now. Jen. Jenny.

She is.

He won’t take that risk. Not with his family, not with his  _sister_. Ross won’t spare her, he knows that. He knows what they’ll do to her and he can’t… He can’t let that happen. He won’t. Not ever.

“Okay,” he says clearly. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

“Quietly?” Ross asks, eyebrow cocked.

Bruce nods, and then the men move in, cuffing him, tranqing him, stuffing his head into a black bag and bundling him into a car. He is in their custody for nearly nine months. Everyone is dead by the time he and the Other Guy have finally broken free. He feels guilty, and he hates himself, but he can’t bring himself to regret it. He’ll do a lot of things over the years that he’ll wish he could take back, that he’ll wish he could forget about or erase. 

That moment in Argentina never ends up being one of them. And neither does this.

4.

A blood transfusion in the back of an alley while he waits for his team to find them. He’s just ruined her life, but she’s still breathing. Her heart is still beating. It’s selfish, so selfish, because he’s changed her. If his blood does to her what it’s done to others, he’s destroyed her. And if it doesn’t do that, the exposure will probably kill her. But she’s alive right now, and the team’s on the way. She’s alive. For now. She’s alive for now, and he’s selfish because that’s. That’s almost enough. That’s almost okay.

5.

“Tony, you don’t have to kick her out.”

“Were you  _there_? Did you hear what she  _said_  to you?”

“Look, you don’t know what it’s like, okay? You don’t know what living with that kind of anger inside of you can do to your everyday emotional state.”

“Bruce.” Tony drags his fingers through his hair, his whole body tight with frustration. “You haven’t been happy with her here. This is your  _home_  and she’s  _hurting_  you and I don’t know how to make that feel okay to me. This is your place. You don’t have to share it with her just because she’s your family.”

Bruce leans heavily against the lab table, his arms crossed over his chest and his head bowed. They’ve been talking themselves in circles because Tony just doesn’t want to listen. “Just hear me out, okay? She needs to have a consistent support system, she needs to have somebody who will have her back even when she’s being irrational, and she needs to have someone who will teach her how to keep her emotions in check while still forgiving her when she can’t. It’s not a matter of want or like or anything. It’s need, okay? If she doesn’t have that, there’s going to be a lot of unnecessary property damage and people getting hurt for no reason. Nobody wants that, Tony. The best way to avoid that is to keep her here, close to me.”

“For how long?”

“Until we know she doesn’t need it.”

Tony’s sigh is heavy. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t like Bruce sacrificing his space and comfort to keep Jen close. But he can’t think of an alternative. Bruce is right (he always is), but that doesn’t mean Tony has to like it. That doesn’t mean Tony has to quietly go along with it and–

“What else am I supposed to do, Tony?” Bruce asks quietly. “She’s not safe out there. If Ross were to find out… It’s not safe for her out there without us. And I just. Tony. I just want her to be.” He struggles to find the words, then finally looks up. Their eyes lock. “If I had had what she has when this had happened to me. Tony. This is better than. Than any of the alternatives, this… This is the best case scenario. This is a  _blessing_  for her and for the general populous and I want this. I want her to have this. Please.” He takes another breath, begs without really begging, whispers, “Let me keep her safe.”

And Tony can’t say not to that, can’t say no to Bruce. He never could. 

+1.

Nobody’s heard from Bruce for almost 48 hours, and he’s turned off the coms in his suite. Jen doesn’t want to be worried, be she definitely is. So is Tony. So is Pepper, so is Steve, so is Natasha. So she does what she thinks is best, and she goes to him. 

She lets herself in to his suite since he won’t come to the door, and she finds him hunched over the bathroom sink. The tap is on full blast, running so hot that she can see the steam. His hand is almost under the spray of it, but not quite. He’s got a pulled apart shaving razor beside him, the blade removed from the head and sitting near his elbow. A pill bottle is on it’s side near the knobs of the faucet, little white pills spilling out and onto the counter. He’s leaning heavily against the counter, his head bowed down low between his shoulders, his hips and legs out and back so that his torso is almost perpendicular to the floor. 

“Bruce?” She refuses to let her voice shake.

He doesn’t acknowledge her for the longest time, but eventually he speaks. His voice is gruff with exhaustion as he murmurs, “I didn’t do anything stupid.”

She says, “But you were thinking about it.” It’s not the question that it should be.

He turns his head and looks at her over the line of his extended arm. “I wouldn’t have done anything. Sometimes going through the motions is enough.”

He doesn’t have to tell her that it wasn’t enough this time. She’s been watching him fall into these ruts since she was old enough to understand that there are some sadnesses that ice cream can’t fix. “Let’s go to Dairy Queen.” She’s still not old enough to not give the ice cream a shot, though.

He’s slow to turn the water off, and he leaves the blade and the pills as they are. She’ll come back later and tidy up for him. But for now they leave together, his arm draped loosely over her shoulder and she leads him into the elevator. His eyes are closed and he looks so tired, so beaten, but he still asks, “What the flavour this month?”

She shrugs carefully so that she doesn’t dislodge his arm. “Donno. Should I get a strawberry shortcake Blizzard, or a marshmallow sundae?”

He snorts. “Marshmallow always makes you sick.”

She smiles a little as he leans a little more heavily on her. The ice cream isn’t going to fix him, and it isn’t going to keep him from doing something stupid later. But it’s a step in the right direction. As long as he keeps stepping, he’ll be okay. She’ll make sure of it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by the delightful werevampiwolf.


End file.
